stuck in Taiwan

Xiamen is really close to both Taiwan and Hong Kong, which makes it a pretty popular place for foreigners to stop when they need A.) to leave the country and get stamped back in because they're here on a tourist visa (Taiwan) or B.) need to get a new visa (Hong Kong).

Xiamen is the bigger island on the left. The bigger one on the right is actually part of Taiwan. It's a 45ish minute ferry ride away, although, for some reason, the ferry leaves from the middle of the west side of Xiamen to get there...

We're a liiiittle farther from the main island (Xiamen is on the left just south of Quanzhou), but still relatively close. It's a six-ish hour ferry, or so I've heard.

Lots of foreigners take the overnight bus to Hong Kong, it takes about eight hours. There's no night return bus, so the bus back takes about 13 hours with daytime traffic.

Tourist visas in China are usually only good for 30 to 60 days per entry, then holders need to leave and get stamped back in. In Xiamen, that means taking a 150 RMB ferry 45 minutes to Jinmen, Taiwan and then basically turning right around and doing the same thing back.

I happen to know some people here that are doing the working-illegally-on-a-tourist-visa thing and were due to leave the country, so we made a run yeatserday. We all had the day off, so we planned to head out early, around 9am, and be in Taiwan by 11am so we could poke around a bit and catch the last ferry back to Xiamen at 5pm.

Xiamen has many ferry terminals, so I asked a friend that had made a visa run to Jinmen before which one we should leave from. We got to the terminal, found the correct ticket window, bought our tickets for 126 RMB apiece and got on the ferry with no problems at all.

The ferry wasn't anything special. The first level, below deck, had benches and tables to sit at. Kind of strange for a ferry, similar to park benches, but hey, it's China. The second level, where we sat, had patio furniture type chairs in the middle and chairs set up around tables around the edges. This level was open air, and you could pay 200 RMB (74 RMB more than the ferry ticket itself!) to sit at the tables and have tea and, theoretically, a better view. The third level we didn't check out because it was really foggy and intermittently raining.

We thought it was pretty funny that they had binoculars available for rent and tons of Chinese were paying for them, even though the visibility was crap. Everyone was taking of pictures of absolutely nothing and we brushed it off as Chinese being Chinese... at first.

After what seemed like it'd probably been about 45 minutes, we came upon an island with some large Chinese writing on the side and a small flag. The boat actually stopped next to it, and it seemed like almost everyone on board came up to take pictures of the island. Then the boat made about a 90 degree turn and kept going. At that point, we weren't quite sure where we were headed.

A long while later, we came upon another island. Since the first one, my friends had been joking saying that that was it, we'd seen Taiwan and we were headed back to Xiamen. We didn't see anything immediately recognizable on the new island, but once we chugged a little further along the coast we saw that they were right, it was definitely Xiamen.

Out 126 RMB and almost two hours for nothing, for a look at Taiwan, I called the friend that had told me which ferry terminal to go to. She put a Chinese teacher from her school on the phone to talk to the ticket agent, and that was when we pieced together something the ticket agent had been trying to tell us initially. We had bought tickets for a sightseeing ferry (which was now obvious and the picture taking made a little more sense), and she was trying to tell us when we bought them that they were round trip (it's common enough for foreigners to need to make the Taiwan run that ticket agents know it).

When making a visa run to Jinmen, you have to buy the return ticket there, you cannot buy round trip. Apparently, the ferry port we were at had discontinued ferry service to Jinmen. The ticket agent wrote out an address for another terminal for us and we tried again.

Taiwan ferry attempt number two was just as easy, and another 160 RMB. We had bought a backpack full of beers to be prepared for that one. We discovered that you can walk through customs with an open beer in your hand on a Tuesday morning and nobody looks at you any funnier than usual (yay China). Ferry number two was a lot nicer, with seats like a coach bus and tvs. And it had good bathrooms (clean and well lit), which is a win for me, as I have the bladder of a four year old.

Reading glasses in four different strengths to help fill out your arrival & departure cards, thanks China!

When we got to Taiwan, we classed things up a bit and didn't take open beers through customs. We did meet a Taiwanese customs official who'd spent a lot of time in Scottsdale, AZ (basically where I lived the five years before coming to China, random coincidence), and was very friendly, but he had the honor of dropping bomb number two on us. When we told him we were in Jinmen just for the day, he informed us that the rest of the ferries that day were cancelled due to the aforementioned fog.

That posed a bit of a problem for us, as none of us had brought much cash and we'd already spent a lot more than expected. Also, we definitely didn't have anything outside of the clothes on our backs and none of our phones worked. We all had the next day off though, luckily.

At that point we were delirious with hunger, as it was 3pm, none of us had eaten more than a banana and yogurt for breakfast and we'd all been drinking beer since about 10:30am. A friend of ours had told us about a great pizza place, so we decided to head there and regroup.

It ended up taking us what seemed like forever to decode his awful directions, but we did discover that they have a temple basically on every corner (his directions said "across from the temple") and the temples are really cool and colorful.

Naturally, once we got there the pizza place didn't take credit cards. They pointed us to an atm at the 7 Eleven down the street and one of my friends set off, while myself and the other waited for the pizza. The atm ended up only taking locals cards, no visa, so he went on a 45 minute wild goose chase to find a bank that was open and took visa. Meanwhile, we got the pizza and it was not nearly as good as all the hype, another letdown. It kind of made us all feel like we were dying after we ate it.

After pizza, we walked down the street and popped into the first hotel we found, were shown a room and checked in. And then we didn't know what to do. We'd been told by a few people there wasn't really anything to do on the island except camp, which was obviously out, so we decided to stop by the one and only bar. Which, sadly, was closed. In the end, we spent the night playing a little poker, drinking some random terrible beverages, going to the worst arcade ever (with only grabby claw games) and then giving up and watching Payback on tv before going to bed. It was terribly boring; the whole day falls into the "fail" column, for sure.

We had to try "The Beer" because, duh, it's THE BEER. Both kinds are crap. Also, I feel like someone should tell Asahi what "Draft Beer" means.

Sparkling Chardonnay is clearly very fancy and tastes like sparkling grape juice, only not as good.

The next day we woke up early, again (8am). It doesn't sound early in the western world, but the earliest I ever work is 10am so the earliest I ever have to get up is maybe 9:15am. We ate a quick breakfast and headed over to the ferry terminal feeling pretty apprehensive, because it was still really foggy.

When we got there, the place was absolutely packed. Hundreds of people had just spent the night, waiting for the next ferry that would be allowed through. Ferry service begins at 8:30am, and the Departures board showed everything up to at least 12:30pm as delayed. We went up to the ticket counter and were given sets of numbers in line for two different destinations, though we weren't quite sure why, but we were numbers 496 through 498 and 502 through 504.

At around 10:30am they finally announced something to the effect that the fog had lifted enough to allow for departures, and they began selling tickets based on everyone's numbers. By the time they got to 500 we figured out why we had two sets of numbers. We wanted tickets on the ferry to Dongdu, Xiamen, where we had left from. Unfortunately, because of the backlog of people, we wouldn't be able to get on that ferry at any point that day. The second set of numbers was for the ferry to Wutong, Xiamen, maybe 45 minutes by public transit from where we live.

After another two hours' wait, another 160 RMB 45 minute ferry, a 15 minute taxi and a 30 minute brt (Bus Rapid Transit) ride, we finally arrived back at home around 4pm, 30 hours into our day trip.

I'd definitely like to go back to Taiwan, the people were much friendlier and spoke a lot more English, which makes everything so much easier, and everything was so shockingly, wonderfully clean compared to China. It'd be nice to be able to actually plan for a trip though, and maybe go somewhere where there are things to do and see!

the hunt

Cost of living in Xiamen is much higher than either Songyuan or Tianjin, both due to the easy availability of more entertainment options and more western establishments, but also just because of the aforementioned size and economic factors of the city. This made my initial move here a bigger financial burden than expected. If I'd known about all the up front moving costs and been prepared I'd have been fine. I was not, soooo, it was not the most fun thing ever. I definitely had to get an advance on my salary to make it work, which is actually pretty common, but still, not a thing I think any westerner likes the idea of.

My school here didn't give me a fully furnished apartment as part of my contract, which had its pros and cons (and ended up proving to be the biggest struggle, naturally). My salary was theoretically higher to compensate, but now that I know all I know, it's just plain harder to save money here than Songyuan. Salaries are lower relative to cost of living. I'm really happy I got to choose my own apartment though. It has Chinese quirks, but quirks I'm comfortable with. It's a place I'm ok calling home (for a year), and I really like the area I live in. That said, it was definitely challenging to find and settle in to.

When I left Songyuan to travel in August, I was headed to Xiamen at the end with intentions of crashing on a friend's couch here until I found my own place. About a week before I was to arrive, my friend skype'd me to tell me he was moving back to the States and he'd be gone by the time I got here. No bueno. Luckily, his roommates were still fine with me staying on the couch, but of the three people in the apartment, I'd only met two of them before moving in with them, and only met them once at that.

Their apartment was great, and they were really nice people, but there were some obvious drawbacks. It was the hottest month of year and their apartment had ac everywhere EXCEPT in the living room, so sleeping was virtually impossible. They also all kept different schedules from each other and different schedules from me, so people were coming home drunk at 4am and ordering McDonald's delivery while others were getting up at 8am to go to make breakfast and go to work. It was exhausting.

View one direction from one of the balconies of my friends' 30th floor apartment. Not bad, not bad at all.

Finding an apartment on your own here is virtually impossible, not being able to read or speak. Most people have to use a real estate agent to find a place. Agent commission is half of one month's rent. Otherwise, there are a few local websites for English speakers where people post roommate wanted ads, sublets, "will" down apartments when they leave and things of that nature. As part of my contract, my school had to help me find an apartment, but after three weeks of searching and no dice on one that I was comfortable with, I went on a local forum and found a Chinese woman offering her apartment hunting services for less than an agent.

While she was looking, I decided three weeks on my new friends' couch was more than enough; it was time for another temporary move. I moved to an area further away from things (like my school) than I wanted to be (15 minutes commute instead of 5, boo hoo, woe is me), but I had a room with a bed and ac (yay!), and a bathroom and all that. I paid a pretty cheap rate to live there for half a month while I kept looking for my own place. The guys that lived there had actually both come to Xiamen from Songyuan, so we had a lot of friends and experiences in common, which was great.

I shared my room there with a friend from Songyuan that I had talked into moving to Xiamen around the same time I did. My school had been screwing with her visa, her pay, her schedule, etc. and she wasn't happy. We both discovered that moving into apartments in Xiamen was going to be more expensive than we had anticipated, so we decided to split the temporary room costs and share till we found our own apartments.

The woman I found on the forum ended up finding my current apartment after a little less than a week of looking, so we weren't there for very long anyway. She also negotiated the rent down a little bit for me, which was of course awesome.

In China, you pay rent quarterly, so to move in to an apartment you have to pay four months' rent right off the bat (three for the first quarter you live there and then one for the security deposit). On top of that, you probably have to pay your agent fee. You need to pay to change your locks when you move in since so many agents have the keys to one apartment. Then there is something akin to HOA fees that you also pay quarterly. You have to put a deposit on your utilities if you don't pay them directly each month, like me. Then there's internet, you pay for the entire year of service at once, you pay for setup and then if you have to buy wireless router that's an additional cost as well. There's drinking water, to get a water machine with the large jugs you have to pay for a large quantity of jugs up front and then they just deliver them to you as you use them up. And then, even for a furnished apartment, you need to buy normal house-y things, like plates and chopsticks and bedding and towels.

All said and done I paid more than two months' salary to get myself set up in this apartment. Eek.

I ended up in the below one bed, two bath, loft apartment on the eleventh floor of a large building that's also home to a somewhat bizarre variety of businesses. My boyfriend was moving to China to live with me at the end of December, so I got a bigger, more expensive apartment than I would have if I'd planned on being alone. The friend that shared the room with me while we were looking ended up staying with me here too until December so we could split costs and she could save money to tackle getting her own apartment.

I feel the need to stipulate that the below photos are pre me moving in a giving the place a serious deep cleaning.

my lofted bedroom

Yes, that IS a seriously random low bit hanging down from the ceiling in the middle of the bedroom that I constantly hit my head on.

living room

This is my master bathroom. "Complete" with three walls, one being frosted glass. I did mentioned apartment quirks, right?

It's hard to tell, but there is something serious missing here... any type of cooking surface under that large hood fan. And the appliance under the counter? It's a dish DRYER not a dish WASHER.

Major quirk #3: the urinal in the downstairs bathroom. And no, I don't use it.

leg #2: travel China, intro to Haikou

When we got to Haikou, my friend was already kind of done. On top of the obvious and expected culture shock, we'd had a lot of people try to rip us off or screw us over, and then there was me and my general hot mess self at the time... altogether, the combination was no bueno.

We arrived, took a taxi to our hostel to settle in and hit the beach and then it started pouring. And the hostel was kind of depressing. And in an area of town with nothing to do. And staff that didn't really speak English. Blah.

So we wandered down the street, found ourselves some food and then went back to our room and said, "Screw it, this is miserable, especially for the beach portion of our trip, we're booking a resort." We found a reasonably priced five star resort (Chinese five star, mind you) and booked it for the remainder of our time in Haikou, so we'd only have one depressing hostel night. And thus my backpaker traveling mindset perished.

That done, we wandered the other way down the street to see what else was there was to see. Whilest traipsing around, I had to pee (I have to pee about every 15-30 minutes, it's ridiculous) so we decided we to sit, have some beers and people watch in a place with a bathroom.

As I said, there wasn't a whole lot around, but we walked up to what looked to be a restaurant not yet open for dinner. There was a table of people sitting there having a small meeting of sorts, so I asked if they had beer. One of the guys laughed and said yes. Another guy came out of the back and I ordered us two beers. Which we proceeded to sit there and drink.

After a while, we noticed that literally every single person that had been there was gone. The table of people had left, as had the few stragglers in the back. We were literally alone, in what was seeming less and less like a restaurant, drinking beers no one had ever asked us to pay for. It was just bizarre and funny. One of the guys eventually came back so we gave him some money, but I don't think it was a restaurant and I don't think they'd have been mad if we hadn't paid at all.

Eventually we went and had dinner as well. I ordered everything in Chinese and the proprietor was the sweetest and most accommodating guy. I was really happy that my friend was finally starting to get to see the things I love about the Chinese, not just the people that want to take advantage of a white face.

It got even better when we went to a produce market afterwards and were asking one of the vendors how to eat some fruits we'd never seen and he showed us how to eat them, gave us some and wouldn't let us pay. Plus, he had kittens for us to play with, which pretty much always ensures a good time when you're easily amused.

This, ladies and gentleman, is what mangosteen looks like. I see these all over the place but never knew what they were and I'd heard of mangosteen but didn't know what it looked like.

The texture of the skin was almost similar to corrugated cardboard, it was strange. The white insides were soft and in segments, like a citrus fruit.

This was the color of honeydew and tasted like it might be in the same family. The skin was much thinner though.

Because PBR really needed to get any lighter.

When we got back to our hostel, there were a bunch of Chinese sitting outside eating cake. Turned out it was the owner's son's birthday, so they invited/forced us to have some cake with them, take some pictures and listen to them playing guitar. They didn't really speak English, but they were nice enough. And there was cake.

Nooooot sure why they locked us in the hostel with a bike lock, but it took us a decently long amount of time to track down anyone that worked there to let us out the first morning.

Cambodia (first impressions)

When I first flew into Cambodia, I changed my RMB at the airport and they gave me riel. This ended up being kind of stupid, because they also use USD in Cambodia. 4,000 riel = 1 USD and you're constantly doing the math, you can pay in a combination of both, and you'll often get change in a combination of both. I actually had a harder time using my riel than using the USD I accumulated.

Cambodia is a really poor country, that might have been the one thing I heard from my students when they heard I was going. But for being so poor, it was definitely more expensive than I expected. You can find a decent hostel for maybe 8, 9, 10 USD, which isn't much, but all things considered it was surprising. Food and such was actually more expensive there than in Songyuan.

Along with USD, I also found a lot more foreigners and a lot more English spoken amongst the locals than I was expecting. I can count on maybe half of one hand, the number of my friends in the States that I have ever heard mention going to Cambodia, or just mention Cambodia at all. We saw so many young, say college aged people, on our trip, and many retired couples as well. One would assume this is why there is so much spoken English. That part was a bit overwhelming for me at first. I'm used to not understanding and tuning out 99.5% of the things around me. Being able to eavesdrop on five conversations simultaneously is quite a bit to take in in contrast to that.

Along with all the foreigners, there is a lot of foreign food. I can't count how many days while I was traveling that I had banana pancakes. Real, western, banana pancakes. It was great. The French had a huge influence in Cambodia, and it was so nice to have that influence in the food as well.

One of the most interesting things for me though, was to see how Cambodia is both ahead of and behind China. For example, China is more developed and has a lot more buildings, but the buildings aren't built to last. Cambodia's are much fewer, but the construction is more solid and enduring, and you can find more older architecture.

Last but not least, I wouldn't be me if I didn't talk about the bathrooms. Siem Reap has primarily western style toilets, though we found more squatters as we moved on. What they don't have so much is toilets with flushers. Almost all of them (western and squatters alike) are manual flush toilets. There would be a big bin of water with a scooper next to the toilet, and when you were done you had to scoop a bunch of water into the toilet to force your business down. And almost all the bathrooms have butt guns (yes, I am SURE this is the technical term). They're like the poor man's version of a bidet. Mounted on the wall next to the toilets, there is a hose with a sprayer on the end that looks just like the sprayer and hose combo you would find at an American kitchen sink.

pee feet

The topic of toilets comes up a lot here, squatters versus western style. When the group of American high schools was here the other week, I was trying to explain to them why I prefer squatters. I'm a hoverer in America anyway, so squatting is completely natural for me. Granted I have good balance and good knees; I think being fat, pregnant or old might change my opinion a bit, but squatters are fine in high heels too.

The only problem with squatters is the splashing. No matter what, your pee is going to splash everywhere, it's inevitable, no matter how slowly you pee. Some squatters have splash guards on the front, but the doesn't protect the sides from splashing. When I first got here, I was kind of thinking I might not wear sandals in summer, but I hate shoes so I do. I've just accepted the fact that my feet will pretty much always have a little bit of pee on them. Fun fact of the day!

Shanghai adventure

I'm an Shanghai right now on holiday. A while back, a friend of mine that I hadn't seen since college (so in six ish years) hit me up on facebook saying he was coming here for a business trip and that I should come meet him. He was coming for 20 days or something, so I said right on, arranged a five day holiday and headed on over.

This friend got a little bizarre after college; he kind of fell off the face of the planet. He stopped returning calls from anyone from high school or college and we never heard much from him again. Still a great guy, but it was a little weird that he just disappeared.

Anywho, since my friend was here for work and obviously had a hotel arranged and everything, I just assumed I was going to stay with him while I was in town. I emailed telling him as much the day before I came here and he asked me to get my own room somewhere instead. Didn't really give a reason, aside from calling his boss an expletive, but she's not here so, so I'm just assuming he doesn't want to be woken up by my crazy self partying. My bad for not asking first though. I told him that it's a national holiday in China this weekend and getting my own room on such short notice could be a little difficult without paying an arm and a leg, but I'd work on it.

He also told me he basically didn't have any time to hang out with me at all. He's working 8am to god knows when at night every night. So I arrived on Thursday and was essentially alone on holiday in Shanghai with nowhere to stay, lol.

I ended up crashing with him the first two nights I was here, and the last three I've booked rooms in three different hostels. I've only stayed in hostels once before in Europe, but I had great experiences with all of them and they're so cheap.

I picked ones in slightly different areas of the city, better for exploring and such. I booked all shared accommodations, thinking I would meet people to potentially hang out with for a bit. Not so much. Right now I'm sitting in the first hostel, which is kind of a fail on multiple fronts. I have a six person shared room all to myself. The place is super cute from the outside and in what I would call authentic Chinese area, but my room is on the first floor and it feels damp. I'm a little weird about bathrooms also and this one is kind of icky. They didn't give me a towel either, sooooo I'm breaking back into my friend's hotel for a shower in the morning.

My first night here, I chatted with my friend for about a half hour and then we both crashed, I was tired and he had to work in the morning. The next day I just went wandering around the French concession area. I absolutely love it. Shanghai is definitely my favorite city in China so far. There is so much to look at!

Shanghai had me once I saw the parks and green things :)

 I met an Aussie guy while I was having lunch yesterday, and we explored for the rest of the day and went to a club at night. Today, I basically was lazy and recovering all day until late afternoon when I got my act together, came over to my hostel and then wandered around the concession area some more.

I'm going to make it an early night tonight and hopefully go check out some more cool stuff tomorrow. This hostel is pretty depressing, so I'm getting out of here asap in the morning. I've never really traveled alone before, and it can definitely get lonely, so lonely AND depressing is not something I need!

random pix: non-gas mask day, peeing instructions & awesome sandwich

Ok, maybe I won't die of smog here after all. Win.

In case there were any questions on how it's done.

This I just like.

zai jian Crack Den

Yesterday I finished class at 5pm to find my school's caretaker waiting to rush me home to move. I had absolutely zero notice that it was going to be moving day, so my stuff was definitely not set up for quick transport. The caretaker brought an older gentleman from Singapore that teaches English as well and two young, male Chinese TAs to help move me. My replacement from Tianjin, who is in town for the Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest, also came along, as she was moving into The Crack Den for the remainder of her visit.

It was a crazy scene there with four men I barely know manhandling all my stuff and throwing it into whatever bag was closest to them, just to get it moved asap. I'm talking shower stuff, groceries, dirty laundry, everything. The caretaker sitting on my obnoxious, purple crocodile suitcase to zip it closed was priceless. My Tianjin replacement was just watching and I'm sure being thankful it wasn't her stuff getting tossed around.

My bags are not small, but these frail looking Chinese men lugged them down four flights of stairs into the van. Luckily my new place is on the first floor and near The Crack Den but definitely a quicker walk to school.

The new place is bigger, especially the bathroom, which was my main issue. I have some shelving in my wardrobe, which is great and a bigger bed too. The bed is actually a Chinese version of memory foam, as opposed to the hard-as-a-board-we-don't-use-springs mattresses in most places, which is nice too.

I am actually fully unpacked now, for the first time in China! Very exciting for me. I'm trying to get rid of one more bag of stuff, which will bring me down to three huge bags to check when I travel and a large carry on. It's a lot of stuff, but not when you consider the fact that it's everything I own. Lots of the younger foreigners still have stuff at their parents' homes, but mine lived across the country from me when I left, and my stuff really wasn't worth shipping. All I have left in the States is my bike, my tent and my sleeping bag. It's weird, but I have so little stuff now and it still feels like way too much.

Back to Crack Den 2.0 though. The only really kind of eh things about the place are that there are no light fixtures, just the light bulbs in the ceiling, which definitely makes it look Crack Den ish, and then the spiders. I've only seen two so far, and they're just daddy long legs, but there are spider webs in all the corners and stuff.

Still, it's a huge upgrade. And I'm already so much more comfortable here. Pictures to come.

Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest

My school has partnered with the government of Songyuan and a local tv station to hold the first Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest. The contest will run for about three months and is open to Chinese of all ages, from primary school up through adults, separated in age based brackets. We'd all heard rumblings about the contest at school, but no one really gave us any details, until the first round of the contest began on Monday. And turns out us foreign teachers are all judges.

The contest sounded like a really cool idea at first to promote social growth and English speaking/awareness in Songyuan. Upon further consideration, it's totally just a way for my school to recruit more students and make more money, but props to my school owner for having the connections and wherewithal to pull it off. The first round has around 6,000 contestants from what I've heard. Each contestant will receive a follow up call from my school trying to enroll them based on judge comments (so comments from the foreign teachers at my school).

We actually had to bring in some teachers from a nearby city that work for a friend of my school's owner to judge the first round because there are so many contestants; the other teachers are essentially on loan to us. We also brought my replacement in Tianjin and another teacher from out there in to help judge as well.

The materials for the contest, including the signup sheets, have photos and bios of some of us teachers I was surprised to find. I can't read my bio and haven't had the whole thing translated, but someone told me it mentions that I was the head of the school in Tianjin. Helllloooooo resume builder, lol! Oh, and they made us all business cards, with just our first names, and none of our contact information, just the school's.

On Monday, we had to be at school at 6am to take a one and a half hour bus ride to the location of one of the first rounds of judging on the outskirts of Songyuan. There will be three rounds of the contest, each about a months long.

For judging, they put each foreign teacher/judge in a classroom with a Chinese tabulator. Contestants come in one by one, the tabulator asks their Chinese name, matches to their registration forms and cards (complete with photos), and asks if they are ready. Then they give their speech. For the first round each contestant is supposed to have written a five minute speech about basically anything (topic is "My..."). After the speech, we ask them a few questions. We judge based on grammar, pronunciation, fluency, accuracy and stage presence and then give comments. They are not penalized for being under time. No one has come close to going over yet.

The first day of round one judging, we had mostly middle schoolers from a rural area of Songyuan, and the speeches were just discouraging. In total I think we judged about 900 students that day, and there were two speeches that we heard over and over again, almost verbatim.

"My family. We are a happy family. There are three people in my family. My mother, my father and me. My mother is a teacher. She is a very good teacher. My father is a doctor. He is very busy. I am a student..." etc.

"My friend. I have a friend named _______. She is very cute. She has long, straight, black hair. She has big eyes, a small nose and a small mouth. She likes the sing and dance..." etc.

Of course there were variations and some standout students, but for the most part, they all read almost the exact same speech and has slim to zero idea what they were saying. We would ask questions like, "What does your mother teach?" and get, "Yes" as an answer. For some of us, the Chinese teachers from the school would stand in the room and it became obvious that they were coaching the students on what question we might ask and telling them how to respond. Ugh.

There was a reporter from the tv station at the first day of judging and she interviewed me, so I might be on the Chinese news (yay CCTV!). She asked how students in that area were performing and I felt bad being honest, but they told me to, so I tried to put a positive spin on it and say that many students needed a lot of work but there were a few excellent contestants.

I didn't take part in the second day of judging, but I did in the third, and we had all high school students. They were more in the center of the city and much, much better. I did get many speeches on the same topic ("My dream..."), but all were obviousl written by the students. Except the one contestant I had that got up and just read the lyrics to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." My first question was, "What is your favorite movie?" Made me laugh.

This week has been my first time in Chinese public schools and first time for a new bathroom experience. Girls bathrooms have trough-ish toilets! There are no flushing systems, just maybe a hose at one end. Luckily the teachers' bathrooms usually have stalls, but the students' bathrooms are just rooms with troughs around the edges and you do all your business out in the open with everyone watching. It feels like you shouldn't be going to the bathroom there. If you teach at a public school without a teachers' bathroom, you can literally be having a face to face chat with your students while you take a poop. In general though, the schools are just pretty gross. And the whole building always smells like bathrooms.

Korea vs China

The main difference I've found between Korea and China is that Korea is significantly more western and modern than China. I'm not sure how much of this is due to the fact that I'm usually in smaller cities in China, but still, even what I've seen of Beijing seems to be behind Korea.

There are a lot more foreigners in Korea, probably due in part to that fact. I was constantly surprised by how many we saw. Koreans stare much less (unless you're going somewhere like a bath house) because they are more accustomed to seeing us, and they are more likely to come up and talk to us.

They have less squat toilets and most bathrooms have tissue and soap, unlike China. They drink both alcohol and coffee, and have establishments to do so all over the place. They do not hock up loogies and spit all over like the Chinese do.

Koreans have much more western table manners too. Chinese eat very noisily and messily, they tend to gross out a lot of Americans. And much of the food over here is very spicy and garlicky, which makes for terrible breath. Chinese are known for having terrible dental hygiene in general. Koreans on the other hand brush their teeth after every meal, even lunch, and eat quietly and tidily with their mouths closed. They also drink while they eat, whereas Chinese usually don't, as they think it will make them sick.

Driving is more western as well; Korea has larger cars (sedans, SUVs and such) and much fewer bikes, scooters and self made vehicles that don't look street worthy. Drivers in Korea, while still a bit nuts, are nowhere near as bad as China, and traffic laws are followed a great deal more. Safely walking across the street is more of a given than a gamble.

They also have these crazy car parks that are like something out of a futuristic science fiction movie. Cars are driven into the building onto an elevator platform that lifts them up into what essentially amount to cubbies for the cars. An attendant drives the cars off the platform into the cubbies and then rides the elevator down. Very cool. There was one right across from my friend's apartment and I wanted to go in and get a picture but the security was pretty tight!

One thing I found interesting though, is that Koreans do not have a version of their language that uses the Roman alphabet to give the pronunciations of words, like the Chinese pinyin. When words are written in Roman letters, they are not pronounced phonetically, as we might guess, but there is no "code" or alternate language guide like pinyin to help pronounce them. This can definitely make it tricky over there. But Korean is a simplified version of Chinese, so maybe not too bad!

beach, Brewers & bartending

On Sunday my friend and I went to check out the beach in Haeundae, a district of Busan. It was gorgeous and reminded me of California! Aside from the missionaries trying to convert us every five seconds (more like every 15 minutes, but regardless), but other than that, it was wonderful. Really makes me wish I could get a work visa here :(

This is soap in the bathroom at the beach; it's on the end of a pole that you have to grab and rub up and down to use. It's a trade off, usually there isn't soap in China, but you also don't have to make obscene gestures in public restrooms.

These kids were practicing capoeira and break dancing on the beach; awesome!

Naturally I like the little skater kids. Most of them were of mixed descent, the beach is in a nicer area of town where foreigners live hotels for extended periods of time.

I got really excited and wanted to take a picture of this guy because of his hat. Turns out he had no idea who the Milwaukee Brewers were, and that's really common here. He just liked the hat, so he bought it. He has happy to take a picture regardless!

After the beach, we headed to our guest bartending gig. It turned out to be a blast and I got to meet a lot more foreigners who were mostly really cool. I did meet one guy though that just bugged the crap out of me. He's a middle aged man with a wife a kid back in the States. He's been in Korea for a year and dating a Spanish chick here the entire time behind his wife's back and apparently this is really common. I remember the last time I lived/works in Mexico encountering the same kind of thing that just makes you want to never get married, ugh.

After bartending we hit the town (sans crappy guy) and caused a ruckus!

Trouble in the making.

Nothing like reaching into the eel tank on the street to catch one until they chase you off!

nuclear power plant & ajima lunch

So my friend works at a nuclear power plant. She and another foreigner teach English to people that work there in one week courses. They only work 17 weeks out of the year, but they are required to be at the power plant 9am-5pm Monday through Friday for face time regardless, which can definitely get crazy. With absolutely nothing to do so much of the time, the whole setup was rather baffling to me, but it's really good money which is awesome.

 

The campus is huge of course, and very beautiful. There is a nuclear grad school there too. My friend only has clearance to be in the educational campus, not the whole area, so we didn't get to see any crazy Homer Simpson stuff. The bathrooms are kind of nuts though. The motion sensors turn on soothing music when you come in the the toilets are crazy high tech; they have heated seats and remote controls!

 

We mostly hung out in the employee lounge all morning. The "ajimas" (old ladies) that clean seem to hang out in there watching soap operas all day as well. Then her boss took us to an energy museum her company built for the town, along with a large community center. Most things were in Korean of course so I could not read, but it was actually a very cool museum.

After that, her boss took us to an ajima's for lunch. This woman basically has a restaurant set up in her home. You drive up to her house and the back has a room that she uses as the dining room. You must call her beforehand to let her know you are coming and she needs at least an hour's notice, if she doesn't feel like cooking she says no. The food she made us was absolutely amazing. My friend said it was one of the best meals she has had in Korea.

This was the first place I'd been where you sit on the ground. I haven't heard of the Chinese doing this, but apparently it is typical in Korea. They have heated floors though, just like the Chinese, so it's not bad at all. Plus you sit on little cushions.

Yep Mom, that's an anchovy. And I ate it.

apartments, hot pot & restaurants

…and I have arrived in TEDA (Tianjin Economic Development Area), woot! My apartment here is significant nicer than The Crack Den and very large. I share with my Chinese TA, which I am completely fine with; we each have our own bedroom and bathroom and all that. She got here first though so she has the master suite, which kind of sucks, but whatever. That' s basically me bitching just to bitch at this point. It's still much much better than any apartment I saw in Songyuan. We have Western style bathrooms, a Western washing machine and Western stove, microwave and toaster oven (as opposed to a hot plate only in the kitchen) too. Pictures to come later.

It's also been confirmed that I still have new digs in Songyuan, regardless of where I am right now. My boss there came up to me yesterday, not knowing that I was planning on moving my stuff to the Indonesian Canadian's apartment until I returned, and said I should pack everything up so that when the Chinese American grad student leaves at the end of this week, she can have my things moved into his apartment to essentially claim it as mine. I asked a couple of the foreigners if they thought that was safe and the general consensus was that that should be ok, so hopefully I return to find everything there and intact!

After class yesterday I went home and finished the unpacking and repacking and then a Chinese friend of mine took me out for hot pot for my last meal in Songyuan. Hot pot is kind of fun, there is a hotplate in the middle of the table where they keep a pot of boiling water with whatever level of spice you like. You order meats and vegetables and such and put them in the water to cook them right on the table. There is also a crazy sauce bar where you mix your own sauces for your food. There honestly had to have been at least 20 options of sauces and things to mix in and people put a lot of different things into each sauce; I ended up with something very peanut-ey and something pretty spicy. I think I did pretty well for not being able to read what I was mixing and not wanting to be obviously sniffing every option. People stare enough as it is !

I have yet to cook in China (shocker), so I have been to a lot of different restaurants. Most of them have been the restaurant equivalent of dive bars, really cheap, not super clean looking but really good food. My business English class told me yesterday that China has a huge problem with food safety which was slightly unsettling, but I haven't gotten sick yet so I'm not too worried. The fast food chains here are more expensive than the divey places, and the Chinese idea of fast food is comparable to a Chiptole or Panera, as opposed to a McDonald's or Burger King. I've also been to a few pretty nice places (like the hot pot place), which in general have had significantly better ambiance but not necessarily significantly better food. Not enough to justify the expense.

It kind of makes me laugh a little when people ask me what I feel like in terms of food here. Whether we get dumplings or noodles or hot pot, it's all Asian food, so it all has similar flavors and makes no difference to me. So far, for the most part I've just been letting people order whatever they think is good for me. Most all meals here are family style, which I love since I always want to share and try everything. I'm still getting used to the over ordering though. The Chinese always order way more food than they need, part of it is to show that they can and part of it is to show respect for their company. Coming from a family where you had to finish everything on your plate in order to get up from the dinner table, this can get a little overwhelming! But they never expect or want to finish everything. They rarely take the extra food home though, which I need to get into the habit of doing (see above regarding not cooking!).